Saturn wrote:You should read his book, if you haven't already, I'm mid way through and it's a very interesting 'biography' or more correctly an extended meditation on Keats' life and work. He has much to say about the posthumous reputation Keats has been lumbered with and the prettification, the emasculation. and the hagiography grown around him that has become to my mind all too prevalent in how some people view Keats.
Saturn wrote:You should read his book, if you haven't already, I'm mid way through and it's a very interesting 'biography' or more correctly an extended meditation on Keats' life and work. He has much to say about the posthumous reputation Keats has been lumbered with and the prettification, the emasculation. and the hagiography grown around him that has become to my mind all too prevalent in how some people view Keats.
Keats would not have been so great a poet had he not been so very human. I have the thought that his being prone to depression made him introspective and that introspection fed his genius.
His temper made him very aware of the power and beauty of raw, unfiltered emotion. ("Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel." )
He recognized in himself a misogynistic streak that, while maddening to the feminist in me, he tried to understand.
He inhaled life and spun it out into poetry that 200 years later still takes the breath away. (“It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.”)
And, sadly, the fact that he died so young makes us speculate about what might have been. (“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter” )
He was definitely not a god, but I think some of us would argue that God, at least, was whispering in his ear.
Saturn wrote:I'd agree with you Malia very much so.
Much as I love Keats' work, and admire him as a person, he was flesh and blood and all that that was heir to; that's all I'm saying, he was human, very much so, and had many faults, as we all do, and I just want people to see him as he truly was: A great poet, and writer to be sure, but a fully rounded man, a complicated individual who was not all sweetness and light and oh so wonderful all the time - no one is, which is why it disturbs me when people hero worship him so as if he were one of the pagan gods in Endymion or Hyperion, some abstract perfect notion of the perfect man, and perfect poet, when he was neither. He wouldn't have wanted that in my view.
Writers capture our thoughts, our collective human feelings and experiences and net them like the butterfly for later study; they are the hunters after the rare and colourful; they pin down fast, and forever what we already know, and have known in our hearts, with words. As such, we accord them great honour and rightly so, but worship and idolatry no.
Malia wrote:Absolutely, Keats had the spell of genius about him. I would think that fact is undisputed.I'm a woman, and I don't see Keats as God-like. In fact, it is his human struggles that attracts me most to him. He had bouts with depression, a temper that sometimes got out of hand, prejudice . . . there was much about Keats that wasn't perfect or God-like. He worked his tail off to become a great writer. His very early work is not that great and I think, had he lived longer, he would have burned his "juvenelia". Keats strove to know himself, to know Beauty in the face of great pain and suffering (not only his own, but what he saw in the general world around him) and that is admirable and laudable. Still, I wouldn't call him super-human or God-like. I'd rather see him as a human with faults who was able to rise to a great level of awareness and activity. He harnessed both the light and shade of his life to create the powerful philosophies and poetry that has become so beloved in the annals of literature.
Ennis wrote:Malia wrote:Absolutely, Keats had the spell of genius about him. I would think that fact is undisputed.I'm a woman, and I don't see Keats as God-like. In fact, it is his human struggles that attracts me most to him. He had bouts with depression, a temper that sometimes got out of hand, prejudice . . . there was much about Keats that wasn't perfect or God-like. He worked his tail off to become a great writer. His very early work is not that great and I think, had he lived longer, he would have burned his "juvenelia". Keats strove to know himself, to know Beauty in the face of great pain and suffering (not only his own, but what he saw in the general world around him) and that is admirable and laudable. Still, I wouldn't call him super-human or God-like. I'd rather see him as a human with faults who was able to rise to a great level of awareness and activity. He harnessed both the light and shade of his life to create the powerful philosophies and poetry that has become so beloved in the annals of literature.
I'll just allow John Keats to speak for himself (again),
"There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions -- but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perfection -- they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God."
I'll just drop this . . . What does it matter, anyway?
What I intimated was that through his very human sufferings and his obvious faults, of which I will admit he had many (primarily screw-up with abandonment issues), he was able to elevate himself, through genius and hard work to god-like status.
I'll just allow John Keats to speak for himself (again),
"There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions -- but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perfection -- they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God."
But I can't! That "sparks of divinity" quote with the reference to the God within is such a part of Pagan philosophy. For those who are tempted to renounce Keats's reference to Pagan influence, maybe he was a Pagan and didn't realize it (even though biographers and I'm sure Keats himself, considered him to be a Deist).
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